CWISL ShoutWest! storymaking festival for school children 2015

Margaret Bateson-Hill's compilation of photos from the ShoutWest! Festival 2015.

ShoutWest! was my second storymaking festival since joining CWISL earlier this year (the first was ShoutSouth!) held at Brunel University in West London with local schools taking part.

The children, illustrators and writers were divided up into three groups: Leopard, Tiger and Panther. I was with the Leopards along with writers Sara Grant, Cate Sampson and Jamie Buxton plus around 30 school children and their teachers.

For Margaret Bateson-Hill's storytelling, Mo O'Hara's drama and Bridget Marzo's illustration workshops the Panthers, Tigers and Leopards all got together.

Other workshops were done within individual groups: The Spark (getting story ideas), Character Passport, Spot the Plot and Mad, Murky & Moody.

The Character Passport session was my first chance to lead a CWISL workshop. I love talking about creating and developing characters so this was ideal for me. I spoke about the importance of characters, how the look of a character can tell us a lot about them including their backstory, how the choice of character can affect the story and drive it along. Then we worked on a character profile as a group and after that the children worked on profiles for characters in their stories. Some wonderful, and highly imaginative, work was done by the children - some of it will be available to view on CWISL's website for under 16s www.shoutaboutmagazine.com.

CWISL are already talking about the next ShoutWest! Festival to be held again at Brunel University in November 2016. I'm looking forward to it.